InFest 2018 Solo Quiz - Finals

The Quiz
Part of BCQC InFest 2018
Set, curated and conducted by Kunal Sawardekar

Rules
• 12 competitors in the semi-finals
• Seamless Infinite Re-pounce
• +10 on all correct pounces; -5 for first 3 incorrect pounces, -10 for
next 3 incorrect pounces and -15 for subsequent incorrect pounces
• After 30 Questions, the last 6 competitors drop out

Part II – Penúltimo
“Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and
Bear.
And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair.”
The Law of the Jungle; Kipling, R.

Question 1
Provide one missing element to make this an exhaustive list

Answer 1
Association Football
(the six other codes are Gaelic, Canadian, American, Aussie Rules,
Rugby League and Rugby Union)

Question 2
From 2006 onwards, following the US Navy’s retiring of the F-14
Tomcat, the Pentagon and the CIA have been cracking down on displays
of the Tomcat, even seizing several static displays from museums and
one belonging to a producer of the TV show JAG. Unlike other retired
warplanes, which either form part of static displays or are stored at at
the combat aircraft boneyard in Arizona in case they are ever needed
again, the US Navy’s 150 retired Tomcats were shredded or otherwise
completely destroyed. Why?

Answer 2
After the US Navy retired the type, the only operator is Iran, and the
Pentagon is worried that the Iranians might use the retired Tomcats
as a source of critically needed spare parts.

Question 3
On 1 December 2006, Dr. Nathaniel Cary carried out what he later
described as “the most dangerous autopsy ever conducted in the
Western world” at London’s Royal Hospital. During the procedure, Cary
and Benjamin Swift, the co-pathologist, along with a police constable
and a photographer, all wore two protective suits each, two pairs of
gloves taped at the wrist and large battery-operated plastic hoods into
which filtered air was piped. Until these precautions were put in place,
hospital staff had left the body in question in situ for two days, still
attached to life-support machines and drips, as it was too hazardous to
move. Who was the subject of this autopsy?

Answer 3
Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-KGB officer and critic of Vladimir Putin,
who was poisoned with Polonium 210

Question 4
When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was being made, Geraldine
Somerville was cast as Lily Potter in part based on a specific
requirement put in by JK Rowling for the role. Rowling herself had been
offered the role by Warner Brothers and Chris Columbus, but failed this
requirement (in addition to not wanting the part anyway). What was
the requirement? (A/V clues follow)

Answer 4
That the actress playing Lily Potter have similar colour eyes to Daniel
Radcliffe. Novel Harry has green eyes (the same as Rowling), but Daniel
Radcliffe’s are blue, and he is allergic to contact lenses.

Answer 5
Name of the countries in red used to be the name of the country in
yellow with a modifier
Djibouti used to be French Somaliland
Mali used to be French Sudan
Suriname used to be Dutch Guiana
Belize used to be British Honduras

Question 6
This term was created along with the eponymous website, to protest
“whitewashing” in the casting of a 2010 film, which notably cast Noah
Ringer in the lead role, along with Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone as
primary supporting characters. The creator also originally wanted to
cast a white actor for the antagonists, but ended up casting two
Indians, an Iranian and a Maori. The name is a portmanteau of the
aspect that the fans criticise, along with a magical system from the
source material and the movie. What?

Question 7
John McCain retired from the Navy in 1981, and moved to Phoenix, AZ.to
work for his new wife’s father. In 1982, he stood for election to the House of
Representatives from Arizona’s 1st District. At a candidates’ forum, he was
accused of being a carpetbagger, and gave what the Phoenix Gazette called
the most devastating response to a potentially troublesome political issue,
saying, “Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My father was in the Navy.
My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a
lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I
could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my
entire life in a nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing
other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived
longest in my life was _____.” FITB

Answer 7
Hanoi, where McCain spent 6 years in the infamous POW camp
nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton after being shot down over North Vietnam
in 1967

Question 8
Canadian passports are traditionally a favourite target of counterfeiters,
for various reasons including very lax issuance procedures before the
1970s, and the Canadian passport’s relatively high number of visa-free
countries. For this reason, Canada has very strict regulations against
passport fraud and misrepresentation of Canadian documents.
However, the government of Prime Minister once called a special
sitting of Parliament to issue an Order in Council temporarily relaxing
some of these regulations. What was the purpose of this relaxation?

Answer 8
To provide fake passports to the American diplomats stranded in
Tehran (a fictionalised version of which can be seen in Argo)

Question 9
The urban legend concerning this product is wrong on three counts -
one being that the product’s development was privately financed by
the inventor Paul Fisher, who wished to cash into a craze in the 1960s
completely on spec, without the permission of the authorities or any
sort of contract. The second count on which the legend is wrong is that
the supposed alternative to this product would be very dangerous in
the intended application, as graphite is a good conductor of electricity.
The third count is that the product was bought by both the US and
Russia, who were able to both get a bulk rate of $4 per piece. What
product?

Question 10
On 10 December 1936, faced with the opposition of the British
government and the public, Edward VIII decided to abdicate, signing a
declaration of abdication in Windsor Castle and giving his royal assent
to the Abdication Act the next day. Pursuant to the Statute of
Westminster being passed in 1931, Edward was also king of the British
Dominions separate from his status as king of the UK, and their
governments needed to approve his abdication as well, which they all
duly did. One government, however, used this opportunity to further
mark their independence by delaying ratification until 12 December,
which meant that Edward remained King of that country one day
longer than the UK. Which country?

Answer 10
The Irish Free State

Question 11
Henri, Count of Chambord, was a grandson
of Charles X of France, and in the 1870s, the
last legitimate descendent of Louis XV.
Possibly owing to some unfortunate
incidents involving members of his family
and guillotines, he had a passionate dislike of
the French Tricolor. This dislike was so great,
that in 1870, he did something that led him
to be mockingly named “the French
Washington” by George Clemenceau, and
had a profound impact on France ever since.
What did he do?

Answer 11
Refuse the French Crown
After the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III had been dethroned, but
the French Assembly still had a Royalist majority. The Assembly offered
the crown to Henri, who refused as long as the Tricolor remained the
national flag. The Assembly decided to temporarily declare a Republic
until Henri died and his presumably more pliant successor could be
offered the Crown, but by the time he did die, the public mood in
France shifted decisively towards Republicanism

Question 12
TV Tropes gives the following examples of a particular trope.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation between Season 1 and 2 (literal)
• Agents of Shield S01E17 “The End of the Beginning”
• Blackadder between Series 1 and 2 (literal)
• The Daily Show in 1999, when Jon Stewart replaced Craig Kilborn
• Dollhouse S01E06
• Friends S01E18 “The One with All the Poker”
• House S01E21 “Three Stories”
This trope is in many ways the opposite of another, much more famous
trope in episodic television. What is this trope?

Question 13
In the 1880s, the British civil servant Poham Young built one of the first
planned cities in the Indian subcontinent in West Punjab. The city was
named Lyallpur after the then Lt. Governor of Punjab, James
Broadwood Lyall. In 1979, the Pakistani government decided that it was
intolerable for the city they called the “Manchester of Pakistan” to be
named after a Briton, and renamed it after another foreigner. Who?

Answer 13
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (Faisalabad)

Question 14
Giorgio Tsoukalos is a Swiss-Greek television personality, and worked as
a bodybuilding promoter for several years, before pursuing his passion
full-time on TV and in print. In 2015, he did a Reddit AMA, on which he
answered questions about how he handles people calling him crazy
(he’s fine with it), about his thoughts on being a meme (he loves it),
whether his hair naturally looks the way it does in his most famous
picture (it does not, he uses hairspray) and his thoughts on the Fermi
paradox. He is probably most famous to us because of a television
appearance in 2010, a still shot from which is a popular meme. What
meme?

Question 15
In 1915, Serbia had been invaded and occupied by the Austro-
Hungarians, Germans and Bulgarians, and the British and the French
had stationed troops in the northern part of then-neutral Greece to
cover the Serbians’ retreat, and hopefully to plan a counter-attack.
Greece’s continuing neutrality was a sore topic for the Entente powers,
and they made repeated efforts to get the Greeks to join the war
against the Central Powers. On October 16, the British made one last
effort to persuade the Greek king, and offered to transfer a British
colony to Greece. This act would have fulfilled the aspirations of
nationalists, and avoided a lot of strife that occured later in the Century
- but King Constantine refused, and the rest is history. What did the
British offer to transfer to Greece?

Question 16
This type of lift is found mainly in Europe (with only two non-European
examples known), and is named after a type of liturgical equipment it is
said to resemble. Name it. (Video clue below)

Question 17
The process to refine sugar from beets had been
under development since the reign of Frederick the
Great of Prussia (with other European rulers such as
Napoleon Bonaparte also patronising the research),
with a view to reducing imports by continental
European countries. In America, however, research
into sugar beet production took on a moral aspect,
and was first promoted by Quakers and other groups
in New England, New York and Pennsylvania, with the
“Beet Sugar Society of Philadelphia” being founded in
1836. Why were these Americans interested in sugar
beets?

Answer 17
To provide an alternative to cane sugar grown using slave labour

Question 18
In season 1 of Orange is the New Black, one scene shows the
transgender character Sophia Burset pre-transition. Considering that
actress Laverne Cox is herself transgender, the show did something to
depict this, that had been done before in Terminator: Judgement Day
to depict the T-1000 in one of the final scenes, but cannot be done in
most other movies. What did they do?

Answer 18
Having the twin sibling of the actor play the part

Answer 19
Tax Avoidance
Window tax – brick over windows
Horsepower tax – increase stroke and decrease bore of cylinders
Brick tax – larger bricks to decrease total bricks per given area
Glass tax – hollow stemmed glasses to reduce weight of glass

Question 20
In 1941, GM vice president Harley Earl took a
group of engineers to Michigan's Selfridge Field,
where a number of warplanes powered by GM
engines were being tested. Here, among other
things, they saw the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, an
aircraft designed by Kelly Johnson, the Lockheed
engineer who would go on to build such iconic
planes as the SR-71. Frank Hershey, one of the
team at the airfield, was greatly influenced by the
plane and after the war designed cars with a key
feature inspired by the plane. The feature was
immensely popular on GM’s cars, and remained a
mainstay of American automotive design till the
mid 1960s. What feature?

Question 21
Nolan Bushnell and his partner Ted Dabney had started a business
called Szygy to produce video games - however, the found that the
name had already been taken by a candle brand owned by a hippie
commune. Bushnell, an avid Go player, suggested an alternate name
which was a check-like position in Go. What was the resulting brand
name?

Question 22
The Batawi were a Germanic tribe around the mouth of the Rhine in
antiquity. 16th and 17th Century Dutch romanticists built a foundation
myth around the Batawi, and the idea was revived in the late 18th
centuries, when revolutionaries who overthrew the House of Orange
with the help of the French named their new state the Batavian
Republic. The name of the Batawi also lived in the name of a Dutch
colonial city until 1949, and the people of that city still refer to
themselves as the betawi. Which modern city?

Question 23
The Pompidou Center is a
cultural venue containing
libraries, art galleries and
performance spaces in the
4th arrondissement of Paris,
and was designed by Renzo
Piano, Richard Rogers and
Gianfranco Franchini. Why
does the exterior of the
building look the way it
does?

Answer 23
The structural and functional elements of the building are on the
outside to allow an open floor plan in the interior

Question 24
The State of Hatay was a short-lived polity in 1938 and 1939 that was
split off from French-ruled Syria and taken over by Turkey following a
(dodgy) plebiscite. A fictional version of this state, ruled by a Sultan
rather than being a republic, and shown to possess archaeological sites
that are in reality hundreds of miles south, appeared in which great
1989 work?

Answer 24
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Question 25
North America (not counting the Caribbean, Aleutian or Hawaiian
Islands) has 6 time zones based on whole-hour offsets from UTC, and 1
time zone with a half-hour offset from UTC. The last time zone is
separate, because it used to be an independent country before 1949,
and the time zone reflects the time at the centre of its territory. What
territory does this time zone correspond to?

Question 26
In the History Channel show Vikings, the
protagonist Ragnar is shown to be the brother of
Rollo. Rollo in the show accompanies his brother
to West Francia and besieges Paris, following
which the Frankish king gives him his daughter’s
hand in marriage and a title, to convince him to
stop raiding Francia. This character is based on a
real-life Viking leader, who founded what state in
the 10th Century?

Question 27
The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird’s mission during the Cold War required it
to fly at very high speeds, and in close proximity to (and in some cases
over) hostile countries, thus creating a need for a very accurate
navigational system that didn’t require too much input from the
already very busy crew. In the days before GPS, an advanced astro-
inertial navigation system called the Nortronics NAS-14V2 was used for
this purpose. The NAS-14V2 was inserted into the aircraft’s spine for
missions, as shown. By what nickname was the NAS-14V2 known to it’s
pilots and crew?

Question 28
USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) is the fourth Nimitz-class supercarrier
of the US Navy, and has been given a nickname based on a famous
aphorism allegedly based on a West African proverb, and a pillar of US
foreign policy in the early 1900s. What is this nickname?

Question 29
During the period last Ice Age,
significantly lower sea levels than present
meant that the island of Britain was
connected to the continent of Europe via
a land bridge. Along with this land area, a
large portion of the present southern
portion of the North Sea was also land,
and was home to flora, fauna and even
several early humans. After what present
day geographical feature is this erstwhile
landmass named?

Answer 29
Doggerland / Dogger bank

Question 30
This painting depicts an extended battle that went on between 1918
and 1920, which wasn’t very much out of the ordinary from what was
happening in that part of the world for the past 5 years. However, the
battle was commemorated in a particular way, due to what is depicted
in the painting, and this commemoration led to the intensification of a
battle that took place in the same location, 22 years later. How was the
first battle commemorated?
(Painting on next slide)

Answer
The city of Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad

Part III – Ultimo
“Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the
same.”
The Law of the Jungle; Kipling, R.

Question 31
In the course of the historical fiction series The Baroque Cycle, the
character Daniel Waterhouse suffers from kidney stones, and later has
them removed in a hazardous and painful operation. Waterhouse
meets another real-life character in 17th Century London, who was also
recorded as having undergone a lithotomy. In book 5 of the Cycle,
Waterhouse and the character reflect on the medical wonder that
freed them from constant pain, and the character shares with him a
prayer of thanksgiving he recites every time he urinates. Which real-life
personality was this, who was known to celebrate the anniversary of
his operation every year?

Question 32
This 2004 episode of Peppa Pig was the subject of viewer complaints
when it aired in a certain country in 2012, after which it was banned for
being inappropriate for audiences (particularly children) in that
country. Which country?

Question 33
In 1959, the Soviet Union launched a probe called Luna 1, which was
meant to impact the moon. However, due to an error in calculating the
launch trajectory, the probe missed the Moon by 6,000 kilometres. This
inadvertently made Luna 1 the first to achieve what milestone?

Answer 33
First to escape Earth’s gravity / first Heliocentric orbit

Question 34
This organisation controls six airports (the largest airport system in the
world by traffic), one port (third largest in its country), four bridges,
two tunnels (and a subway system that runs through one of the
tunnels), several bus terminals (one of which was listed as one of the
10 ugliest buildings in the world) and runs its own police force. Which
organisations?

Answer 34
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Question 35
What is common in the names of these three planes, apart from the
manufacturer’s name?

Answer 35
“Fortress” - Flying Fortress, Superfortress and Stratofortress

Question 36
FITB in this tweet from November 2017.

Answer 36
Roy Moore, who was allegedly banned from the Gadsden, AL mall
Franklin Pierce was the US President at the time of the Gadsden
Purchase, when the US bought 30,000 square miles of land from
Mexico in 1853

Question 37
After the end of the Williamite War in Ireland in
1691, a large Irish Army departed to France as
agreed under a treaty with the English - an event
later known as the Flight of the Wild Geese.
Following this, and especially after harsh Penal Laws
made it impossible for Irishmen to serve in the
British Army, Irishmen served in various continental
armies - including the Spanish, French and Prussian
armies and several armies in Italy. Their record was
generally good and they were prized by European
armies, except the Swedish, whose Irish troops
promptly switched sides in a battle with the Polish
army in 1609. Why did the Irish troops change from
the Swedish to the Polish side?

Answer 37
The Irish troops were Catholic, and could not bear to fight their co-
religionists for the Protestant Swedes

Question 38
In 1987, Ronald Reagan was embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal. On
23 November, ABC reporter Sam Donaldson cornered Reagan at a press
event, and repeatedly asked him if he was going to let Oliver North and
John Poindexter, who were directly implicated in criminal acts resulting
from the scandal. Reagan, who was “somewhere between bewildered
and furious’ in the words of Rachel Maddow, deflected the questions
with a joke, and started a tradition that continues to this day. What
tradition?

Answer 38
Presidential Turkey Pardon

Question 39
In 1988, Squadron Leader Ajjamada B.
Devaiah became the first member of the
IAF to be posthumously awarded the
Mahavir Chakra. While the Mahavir Chakra
is only awarded for acts of conspicuous
gallantry in the face of the enemy, the only
action “in the face of the enemy” that the
IAF had been involved with since the 1971
War was Operation Pawan, which Sqn. Ldr.
Devaiah was not a part of. How did Sqn.
Ldr. Devaiah come to be awarded the
Mahavir Chakra.

Answer 39
He was flying a Dassault Mystere in the 1965 War, and managed to
shoot down a vastly superior Pakistani Lockheed Starfighter, before he
had a fatal crash (in Pakistan). The IAF was unaware of the
circumstances of his death until the 1980s, when the PAF’s official
history of the 1965 War was published.

Question 40
The northern three are named after a married couple and their eldest
son, the middle two for a region in DR Congo on the west bank and a
former German colony on the east bank respectively, while the
southernmost one used to have a tautological name, but is now named
for the country to the west. What is the collective name for these?

Question 40
When the executives of this company were approached by the prop
team of a film that was released in 2000 to provide examples of their
product for use on the film, they were aghast with the idea of their
product being featured in such a way, and refused. Luckily, Tom Hanks
and Robert Zemeckis were able to use their star power to convince an
employee in the PR department of the company to sanction 20 copies
of product for the film, which the props team used sparingly. The prop
won the 2001 Critic’s choice award for ‘Best Inanimate Object’, and
today, the company sells replicas of this item on their store. Which
company?

Answer 41
Wilson Sporting Goods

Question 42
In the 17th Century, the Dutch East India Company colonised the
southern parts of the island of Formosa (now Taiwan), to be used a
base for trading with the Chinese empire across the Taiwan strait. This
meant that most of their early trading was with the city of Amoy (now
Xiamen), where the Amoy dialect was spoken, as opposed to the
Portuguese (who traded from Macau) and most of the Muslim world
(who traded over the old Silk Road). What linguistic oddity has this
introduced in most West European languages?

Answer 42
Dutch and most WE languages use a variant of the Amoy word “tê” for
tea, while most other languages use a variant of “chá” (Northern
Chinese) or “cha” (Cantonese).

Question 43
While this term may imply that it refers to diplomatic efforts by South
American countries, it actually refers to French defence of its national
interest in its former colonies in North and West Africa in the 1970s.
Similar actions had been undertaken in the past by European powers
using riverine warships. India was and is equipped to undertake these
types of actions today, but has not ever done so (unless you count the
Kargil War). What term.

Question 44
In November 1943, the USS William D. Porter was ordered on a top-
secret convoy to Egypt. On the 14th of November, the convoy
undertook a live-fire shooting demonstration, in the course of which
the Porter made a mistake, that while not fatal, effectively ended the
career of every single one of her officers, and in fact initially led to the
entire ship’s company being arrested. For the next two years of the war,
the ship (under new crews) was greeted with messages of, “Don’t
shoot! We’re Republicans” by every ship and naval base she
encountered. What mistake did the Porter make on 14 November
1943?

Answer 44
Accidently shot at the USS Iowa, which was carrying Franklin D.
Roosevelt to the Cairo and Tehran conferences.

Question 45
Bull is a drama series playing on CBS (and AXN in India) about a
psychologist called Jason Bull who uses his training to develop “trial
science” and starts a jury consulting firm . Bull claims to be based on
the early career of which celebrity, who has been extensively involved
with the show himself?

Question 46
The region is Thrace is split between the
nations of Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria today,
and was named by the ancient Greeks after
the Thracian tribes that lived there. Before
the name “Thrace”, however, the region was
named after its principal river. The old name
is especially appropriate if you consider the
old name of the region directly opposite the
Dardanelles from Thrace. What name?

Answer 46
Europe, after the Hebros river.
The part of Turkey across the Dardenelles from Thrace is the region
that was originally called Asia, as in the Roman Asia province

Question 47
What do the cities of Allahabad, Bilaspur, Kochi, Jabalpur, Cuttack,
Jodhpur and Nainital (and arguably Ahmedabad and Guwahati) share
with Karlsruhe in Germany and Bloemfontein in South Africa?

Answer 47
Judicial capitals separate from administrative / legislative capitals

Question 48
This is the Lotus Bridge connecting Macau with Hengqin Island in the
PRC. What is the purpose of the unusual arrangement of the bridge?

Answer 48
To allow LHT Macau traffic to seamlessly transfer to RHT China and
vice-versa

InFest 2018 Solo Quiz - Finals

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InFest 2018 Solo Quiz - Finals